ground fault, what am I doing wrong?

Posted by mikeinWA on March 18, 2006 at 09:21:29 from (69.29.244.37):

I am trying to chase down the cause of a draining battery on my 3020. (two 12 volt neg ground batts, 12 volt starter and relay, one wire alternator) So I seem to remember using a votometer between the disconnected neg cable and the neg batt post. I even searched around the archives and some other spots to confirm this as a test. So armed with my voltometer and enough knowledge to be dangerous I proceed. On the left hand battery, which goes immediatly to the starter solenoid, when tested as described above with the votometer set on 12v volts I get a reading of 10+. So I begin to disconnect things until I am all the way down to the solenoid. Not believing the results I test my trusty 1967 f100 the same way and I get the same results. It reads about 13 volts when attaching the voltometer to the dissconnected neg cable then to the empty neg post on batt. Soooooo, then I try with a test lamp and in neitheer case will it light the lamp, but it still reads voltage. Will someone please tell me what I am doing here, and maybe while your at it can you explain why I am getting a read like this? I thought because everything is turned off that there would be no voltage flowing past the key switch.

Thanks
Mike

Replies:

• Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? Tom in Central Pa. 14:04:29 03/18/06 (0)
• Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? Tom in Central Pa. 14:02:11 03/18/06 (0)
• Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? Tom in Central Pa. 13:59:59 03/18/06 (0)
• Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? Tom in Central Pa. 13:59:49 03/18/06 (0)
• Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? John T 10:56:04 03/18/06 (2)
  • Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? Jon Hagen 11:59:48 03/18/06 (1)
    • Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? John T 13:20:45 03/18/06 (0)
• Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? mikeinWA 10:22:21 03/18/06 (0)
• Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? JT 09:58:48 03/18/06 (0)
• Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? Bob 09:47:42 03/18/06 (2)
  • Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? Bob 10:07:19 03/18/06 (1)
    • Re: ground fault, what am I doing wrong? Jon Hagen 11:07:50 03/18/06 (0)

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